Property Management Growth with DoorGrow DGS 299: The Importance of Having Proximity to Other Innovative Property Managers
They say you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull shares the importance of surrounding yourself with like-minded people, including growth-oriented entrepreneurs in the property management industry.
You’ll Learn[01:24] The 3 Key Ingredients for Building Friendships
[08:56] Creating Connections in Entrepreneurship
[16:46] The Importance of Physical Proximity and Community
Quotables“If you don't have the connections, the network, the friends, the success that you're hoping for, part of it may just be you don't have proximity. You haven't chosen to initiate stuff with people.”
“They say you're the sum of the five friends you spend the most time with. You'll start to adopt their mindset.”
“Not a lot of people are willing to get a coach or hire a consultant or invest in themselves or invest in their business.”
Resources Transcript[00:00:00] The fastest path to growth is to do it with others.
[00:00:03] It's to have people that are playing a game. They can make mistakes for you and tell you what they learned. They can tell you what's working and you can try that stuff too. And it just helps speed up momentum.
[00:00:15] All right. I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted and cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them to figure out how to grow, add doors, improve pricing, increase profits, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. We are like Bar Rescue for property managers.
[00:00:56] In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses and we run the leading property management mastermind, with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow, we believe that good property managers can change the world, and that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.
[00:01:18] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We wanted to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let's get into the show. So what I wanted to talk about today with everybody, one of the things that's really interesting that I've been thinking a lot about is proximity.
[00:01:43] I want you to think about the power of proximity, location, nearness, distance proximity can be very powerful. So I've been listening to this audio book by Mel Robbins called Let Them and All About the Let Them Theory that she came up with, and I think it's a brilliant book. It aligns with a lot of other books that I think have really good philosophy and ideology in it. And one of the things she talked about is creating friendships and how to create friends and how as adults that's hard and why. And what she explains in the book is that when you're young, you have like... First, friendship takes three key ingredients, proximity, timing, and energy. Proximity, timing and energy, these three pillars of friendship. And when you're a kid, you have set schedules, you're going to school all the time, you're around other people for hours and it takes like 70 plus hours to make a decent friendship and like, I don't know, 200-300 hours to make like a really strong friendship.
[00:02:45] And we don't generally get that a lot of times as adults. It's hard to get that amount of time with people. Can you imagine 70 plus hours with somebody. Like it's difficult to get that. So then we end up, we've got our spouse, maybe our kids like, you know, so we, it becomes really difficult. Not only that, but she talks about how at around our twenties there's what she calls the great scattering where proximity and timing changes dramatically for everybody.
[00:03:12] People are like, you know, leaving, graduating college moving away. Like there isn't this set system that you're caught up in that creates proximity and the timing is the same, where everybody has the same stuff going on. Then there starts to be marriage and kids and traveling and like moving places and work and so timing shifts for everybody.
[00:03:35] And just because proximity or timing changes doesn't mean that you're no longer friends with that person and they're now your enemy. Because their timing changes and you feel maybe like they abandoned you, but really as soon as the timing aligns or proximity aligns like you're nearby or you're at a similar stage in life again, like you both have kids now or something like this, you're both married now, then the friendship can pick right back up.
[00:04:01] And I thought that was a different perspective. A lot of people, you know, I think as adults find it difficult to make friends and so it's about proximity and you know, the person you have the most proximity to is going to be your spouse. Like, you got to choose your spouse wisely. So I'll give you an example.
[00:04:16] So Sarah lately has been really into flying, really into getting her pilot's license, not because she wants to someday become a commercial pilot and fly people around. It's because she wants freedom and it's this hobby and this passion of hers that she's caught up in. And she really is into power and achievement.
[00:04:35] So she loves being able to learn and level up and develop skill in whatever. Like at a young age, she got a black belt in kenpo karate, right? And you know, she's this kind of personality, power and achievement is her basic need. So she's been flying. Well, because I'm around her and I'm in proximity to her.
[00:04:54] I'm learning a lot about aviation, I'm learning a lot about weather. I'm learning a lot about all the stuff she's learning about because she's telling me and she's excited about it. And so, you know, just in proximity, and she just did her first flight. She just did her very first solo flight, which was like a big celebration.
[00:05:12] And her instructor cuts off the back of her shirt because I guess the tradition is when your trainer would sit behind you in a plane and tug on your shirt tails to let you know if you need to go right or left because they didn't have the planes they have now, which is like dual control and you can steer.
[00:05:28] He cut off the back of her shirt and like there, there's this celebration. I got to watch her first flight. I got to go up in the tower at Georgetown Municipal Airport or whatever it's called. That's near our home. And I went up into the tower twice. I got you know, we bribed them with cupcakes to let us come up and they were willing to let us come up.
[00:05:46] I got to see that I got to see, you know, takeoffs and landings from the airport. I got to see the hangar at Pilot's Choice where she was learning and meet instructors there. And I got to see kind of her whole world that she's been involved in for months and get the experience. And eventually she convinced me to do a flight.
[00:06:06] I'd never flown in a small plane. Like these are small, these are like, it was a tomahawk. This is what she's been learning in. because they say it's the hardest plane to learn in, and that's what Sarah intentionally chose to do. She's like, I want to be in the most difficult plane to fly. It's like a lawnmower with wings.
[00:06:26] Like it's just like it's really tiny, no air conditioning. Like you get really hot in the summer. And I went and did my first flight. It was a discovery flight with her instructor. And I got to go up and experience what it'd be like, and I had no idea, like, I thought maybe it'd be like flying in a... I thought it'd feel like a rollercoaster. because you know, big planes don't get moved around a lot. I thought the little plane would feel like I'm like a rollercoaster, like my stomach's moving around and I'm like freaking out and whatever. But it wasn't that exciting. It wasn't a rollercoaster. It felt like just bumping around on the air.
[00:06:58] Like it was pretty cool and I got to do everything. He had me do the takeoff turn everything except landing, which thanks for helping me land, Mike. We tried to trick Sarah that I had landed my first time and I was an expert because that's one of the harder things to do. But she didn't give us the reaction we were hoping for.
[00:07:16] And because she knew we were messing with her, I think. So it, that didn't work, but we were trying to mess with her because when she first started getting her first landing, she was so excited. So he was like, "he's a natural have been teaching him, because he just landed the plane by himself," and she didn't give us any reaction, which made it not fun.
[00:07:33] Thanks Sarah. So she knew we were up to something. Anyway, so it was it was an experience. I would never have probably just chosen to get into a little plane and fly it and do a lesson or any of this if I wasn't in proximity to somebody that was doing it. And so the people that you choose to be around... what I'm trying to illustrate... are important. Proximity matters.
[00:07:56] And so if you don't have the connections, the network, the friends, the success that you're hoping for, part of it may just be you don't have proximity. You haven't chosen to initiate stuff with people. You haven't been around the right people. You haven't been around people that are successful.
[00:08:12] If you aren't feeling successful, it may just be you're lacking proximity. It really can be that simple. They say you're the sum of the five friends you spend the most time with. You'll start to adopt their mindset. You'll start to adopt their goals to some degree, you will start to do this.
[00:08:27] Who knows? Maybe I'll end up getting a pilot license too someday. I don't know. Sarah's so passionate about it. I might catch the bug. Right. You know, now after we get past this great scattering in our twenties as adults, you know, especially as entrepreneurs where we feel really isolated, we feel like nobody else is like us.
[00:08:45] We're aliens. Everyone wants safety and security, and they want to get a job, and we want freedom and we want fulfillment. We're just different. It's important to create proximity and connections with other entrepreneurs. This is one of the things we've really worked hard to facilitate in our mastermind.
[00:09:03] When people join our program, we get them connected with each other. Madi, my daughter, who's over client Success, who edits this podcast, shout out to Madi, while she's watching this and editing and does all of my social media and helps with organizing our short form videos and everything that we do.
[00:09:19] But she's over client success. One of her goals or responsibilities in the results that she's expected to accomplish is to get clients connected with each other because we know that one helps them get better results. Two, helps them stay in our program longer because they have friends. And three, helps them just create relationships that can last a lifetime and that will positively impact their future and help them. You know, these are people that, in our mastermind that we attract, these people are people that invest in themselves and invest in their business. Not a lot of people do that. Not a lot of people are willing to get a coach or hire a consultant or invest in themselves or invest in their business.
[00:10:00] I mean, that's. Those are rare people. These are people that have kind of realized that the hardest way to do it is to do it alone. They've struggled. They've figured out it's not working to like just do it all myself and watch YouTube videos and read books and think I'm the smartest guy in the room.
[00:10:16] And you end up spending like a decade longer. You could collapse a decade down into a year in results. You could get a result in a year that would take some people a decade to figure out, because you don't have to make all the mistakes. Somebody else has done this. People can point you in the right direction.
[00:10:31] And so this is one of the things that we're really trying to figure out, and one of the problems or challenges we're working on at DoorGrow is how can we create more proximity? When we did DoorGrow Live just recently, one of the things that we did is we went bowling. We took everybody like we went bowling.
[00:10:48] Another thing that we did is we all we did a mixer and a, like a little group mingle thing. We played a game two questions and a lie. And people are just sharing all sorts of property management stories. They had to share two true ones and one that wasn't true and people had to guess.
[00:11:03] And people were gathering points based on whether they guessed accurately, all three on a person. And then there's those in-between moments where people going out to, you know, get lunch or eat dinner together, or, you know, spending time in the evening together. These things create, this allows proximity, allows you to spend some time connecting with people and networking and creating those relationships.
[00:11:25] And so you need to make sure you get in the room with the right people. You need to be around, you need to have proximity to people in your industry. You need to have proximity to people that are growth minded. And if you can find a place that does all of this, that's rare. And so this is one of the things we wanted to facilitate with clients.
[00:11:44] And then if we find out people are near each other, like we've got a bunch of clients in Florida for some reason right now, we've got a bunch of clients in California. We've got a bunch of clients in certain geographic areas. We want to get them connected. You know, the fastest path to growth is to do it with others.
[00:12:01] It's to have people that are playing a game. They can make mistakes for you and tell you what they learned. They can tell you what's working and you can try that stuff too. And it just helps speed up momentum. And it's just great to be connected with people that are playing a similar game that understand you, that don't make you feel like an alien and just hear what you're dealing with and say, why don't you just go get a job and why do you deal with this?
[00:12:25] You know? And so. It's great to have that. So proximity. Now, timing, you need people that are at a similar stage in life. Well, if they are married, have kids are building a property management business, that's a very common stage. That's a similar stage that you could be around others in.
[00:12:44] And that timing is the right timing because without timing you, it's really hard to connect and have a relationship or relate to these people. You know, like if you are married and have kids and they're out just drinking and partying all the time or whatever, and that's how you used to kind of live.
[00:12:58] You're like, well, it doesn't kind of fit my lifestyle now. So now we're not friends. The timing's just off for now. And then energy is just the way she describes, it's kind of like the vibe or the connection. You can't choose that. Just some people you connect with well, and some people that you don't, but I think in general, you increase the odds of that dramatically by being around people like you.
[00:13:18] You tend to like yourself, hopefully, and you're a good person. You're a badass. You've dealt with challenges. You started a business. You're doing property management, which is difficult work. You're building up your operations and you're focused on adding doors and growth, I mean you're going to find people with a similar energy to you, which is growth-minded positive focus, active, action takers.
[00:13:41] And so if you can match all three, you can find people that you can create proximity to, that are at the similar stage in life, the right timing, and they have the right energy that you want to connect with and be around, and there's just that energetic chemistry or connection with them, these are amazing people for you to be connected to and it's going to make life feel lighter. It's going to make life feel easier. It's going to make life feel more fun. It makes things worth it. And so that's my challenge. That's something I'm going to be really focused on and working on because I've moved around a lot.
[00:14:12] I've been in California, I've been in Idaho, I'm now in Austin, Texas area. And I've really loved the Austin area. It's been a lot easier for me to find people that have similar energy and there's good proximity to people with similar energy. There's a lot of entrepreneurs. There's an entrepreneurial culture here.
[00:14:30] So I've really enjoyed being able to connect with people in the Austin area, and I made some really good friends, and we don't have to see each other all the time. We don't have to hang out all the time. I might see somebody like once a year and we're still like, we pick right back up and we're connected and we, that's how entrepreneurs work.
[00:14:46] We're busy, and really good friends that are really successful. They're busy people. And then I've got friends that are scattered throughout the US and beyond that, you know, I've had a good connection with at an event or something, and I know the next time we get on a Zoom call or we hang out in person or whatever, it's just going to feel like awesomeness and magic, right?
[00:15:04] Again, because they have the right energy and that'll be the right time to do it. And it doesn't matter if we're not connecting now, they're still my friends. And so my challenge, all of you listening is create some proximity. Make that a focus of attention. If you feel like your business is stuck or struggling.
[00:15:23] Maybe look at the proximity of the business owners you're around. Are they stuck, struggling? Who are you connected to? Maybe you just don't have anybody you're connected to. You need a friend, you need a mentor, you need somebody you can relate to. You need people that are playing a similar game, and if we could help facilitate that at DoorGrow, we'd be happy to.
[00:15:41] But there's plenty of other things you could maybe go try. It doesn't have to be us, but you need to be connected and you need to create some connections. And that could be through trade organizations like NARPM, N-A-R-P-M, the National Association of Residential Property Managers. It could be at local meetup groups.
[00:15:57] It could be hanging out with other real estate investors. Whatever floats your boat, whatever makes you feel connected and valued. So that's my message for today is go create some proximity. Sarah and I are about to take a trip to Mexico. We're going to go connect with a bunch of people and these are people that just to be at this event, they've spent over 25 grand or more, some like a million dollars, like to be part of this group that we're going to see. And we've spent a lot of money to be in and connected with this. And so that's like, you know, kind of pay to play, right? There's a certain caliber of people that we get to be around that are willing to invest so much and we're really excited to meet these type of people.
[00:16:38] You know, I'm in a local mastermind, an organization called Speakeasy and it really has nothing to do with drinking because we don't do any of that. But it's like we get together in somebody's house and like they're all local entrepreneurial business owner people and they're all doing really cool things.
[00:16:53] There's some amazing people. So I've been able to connect with local people doing that. I'm in a mastermind for coaches and it's mentored by two really amazing high level, high net worth coach, people that run coaching businesses that may be a little similar to DoorGrow, different industries.
[00:17:11] And so I create a lot of proximity and connection to that. And we go to that several times a year and sometimes hang out on Zoom calls related to that. And gosh, what else? And there's lots of other little things, events we go to, stuff that we enjoy. And so, proximity.
[00:17:28] So there's power in just being around each other. And the other thing is physical proximity, not just zoom calls, but physical proximity. There's something different about that. There's something that psychologically switches in our brain that it becomes real, and we get past this, that everything digital is maybe fake or not real, and we connect with real people and we feel real energetics and like our physical body, they say actually energetically extends out feet from our body. They can measure this and we're kind of like an atom like the visible part is, what you can see is like right here, but there's this aura or energy or whatever extends far out. And so when we're in proximity, we're connecting with people.
[00:18:08] We can feel them. There's an energetic aspect to this, there's a quantum physics aspect to this, and so proximity can be really powerful. So go create some proximity, people and if we can help you at DoorGrow, let us know. So that's my message for today. If you felt stuck or stagnant and want to take your property management business to the next level, you want to create some proximity with some cool people reach out to us at doorgrow.com.
[00:18:33] Also, we have a free community. This is one little, not as deep, but it's a way of creating some proximity. It's a community just for property management business owners. We don't let team members in or other people in, we try to filter that out. We reject 60 to 70% of the applicants into this group. It's just business owners.
[00:18:50] It's exclusive. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com, and if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe, reciprocate, help us out. Leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. It helps us spread this message. It helps us reach more people and helps us have more fun and enjoyment.
[00:19:10] We'd appreciate it here at DoorGrow. And until next time, remember, the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.